


summer baby

by blueparacosm



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gay, Humor, Language, M/M, Murphy is a Little Shit, Pining Bellamy, both assholes, canonverse, honestly i have no idea what this is, prose, s1 but also s2 and s3 and then post s4, sentimental bellamy, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 21:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10522599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/pseuds/blueparacosm
Summary: It’s the nineteenth of June and Bellamy is hearing a lot of things. The crackling of a forgotten fire, making the whole tent glow orange like it’s going down in flames too. Murphy’s breathing, louder than usual, or maybe Bellamy’s just thinking about it too much. The flickering of mosquitoes’ wings against the canvas, trying to get in, and of course they would. In here, it’s quiet and it’s warm.“It’s my birthday,” Murphy says, suddenly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i genuinely do not know
> 
> [originally titled 'the miracle of birth' but then i realized that sounds super gross]

It’s the nineteenth of June and Bellamy is hearing a lot of things. The crackling of a forgotten fire, making the whole tent glow orange like it’s going down in flames too. Murphy’s breathing, louder than usual, or maybe Bellamy’s just thinking about it too much. The flickering of mosquitoes’ wings against the canvas, trying to get in, and of course they would. In here it’s quiet and it’s warm and at least one of them is running hot with red blood but sometimes Bellamy doesn’t know who. (He thinks maybe if he were a mosquito he’d probably be body-slamming himself against the walls of their sweet little abode too.)

“It’s my birthday,” Murphy says suddenly, and the man hiding under his own ebony curls casts his gaze away just as Murphy glances at him out of the corner of one glassy eye. A precaution.

“Summer baby, huh?” he teases, flicking a streamer of limp-hanging hair out of Murphy’s eyes without looking.  
  
Murphy shrugs against the tarps and blankets underneath them, unamused. Bellamy frowns.

“I’ll throw you a party next year,” Bellamy tries again, not really sincere, and Murphy’s eyes soften a little at that. But he doesn’t smile. Neither of them do that so much anymore.

“If we live that long. I expect a piñata.”

“We will.”

“Live that long or have a piñata?”

Bellamy looks at him then, stormy ocean eyes trained on his fingers as they trace the crosshatches in the rough blanket trapped under their tangle of tired limbs. He thinks he might throw up or cry or kiss him or spontaneously combust or do a number of other things that pale boys with blue eyes and sour attitudes make him feel like doing. The image of his lips on Murphy’s and his head alight with flames all at once has something pleasant and confusing stirring around in his gut.

“Yeah,” is all he says, and it doesn’t really make sense, but Murphy looks at him like he’s just gotten down on one knee and promised him something really, really grand.

The man with freckles and the sudden feelings (?!) out the wazoo turns onto his side and shuts the other boy out. His heart’s up in his throat for some reason.

They don’t talk about it again.

 

*******

  
It’s the tenth of July and his feet are skimming the top of a little gray step-stool like he’s a kid reaching for the cookie jar. Except he’s twenty-three now and the cookie jar is a breath of air that isn’t cut short by the tug of a blood-red belt.

“I want you to feel what I felt,” he croaks, regret swimming the fifty meters in the World Aquatic Championship in his eyes. (Bellamy hopes to God, the bastard, that he drowns himself.)

 _I do!_ He wants to scream. _I do! I do I do I do!_

But he can’t fucking breathe.

The ferocious brunet swings the butt of a rifle right into his stomach and murders every fucking butterfly (mosquito) Bellamy’s ever housed in there with one good strike. When he regains his sight and drinks in a gasp like it’s his last, and it might be, he doesn’t see anything he likes on that twisted little face anymore. Just a place meant for fists and blood and squirming larvae once Bellamy gets out of this noose and puts them both in the fucking dirt.

(This wasn’t the kind of piñata he’d promised.)

 

*******

 

It’s the twenty-first of July and Bellamy’s knocking against the mean-looking side of a cliff like a pendulum. “Don’t you worry, Bellamy!” a voice growls. His knees collide with the rock again. The cliff spits dirt and pebbles at him for causing so much trouble. “I won’t drop you!”

The belt slackens and he and the brunette clinging to him like a koala within an inch of her life smack against the grimacing face of the cliff one more time. Murphy’s reassuring cries begin to sound more like jokes as the collisions get more and more brutal, and the sky gets further and further away, like he’s gently lowering them to the ground where Sterling’s deathnap seems to be going soundly.

(Still not the piñata he was talking about.)

By the time there’s something solid under his quivering legs again Murphy’s breathing hard and shaking like he was the one going impromptu bungee-jumping thirty seconds ago. Then the older man’s eyes sink down to the red seat-belt encircled like Christmas wrapping-paper around the boy’s bloodied hands and blistered wrists-- and it’s so sick and ridiculous and utterly impossible that it almost draws a tinny, frightened laugh out of him.

But Murphy looks him in the eyes like absolutely nothing funny has happened here or anywhere in the world ever for all of eternity, like he hasn’t already flattened him over a glass ceiling peering into Hell before, like really losing him would’ve... hurt?

But he didn’t. He didn’t drop him. _(He made a promise and he kept it.)_

The man with the freckles and the head on fire thinks his own carbon dioxide might be getting to him.

 

*******

 

It’s the third of October and Bellamy has hit the floor so hard that dust is flying up around him like he’s the sorriest excuse for a meteorite that the world’s ever had.

He can’t believe his broken eyes. There’s a figment of his imagination at the end of the tunnel under a goddamn spotlight, like he might break into show tunes any moment now.

His eyes are glistening inexplicably as Murphy moves towards him, glittering cane stashed behind the walls and tap shoes in his back pockets, Bellamy guesses.

The boy ghosts right past him like he’s a stranger, even with Bellamy practically clinging to his ankles, casting longing glances over his shoulder like fishing line while people _talk talk talk talk talk_ at him. Murphy’s got this blue light radiating from him and a languid little smirk on his face and he makes the air taste like they’ll live forever and Bellamy wants in on the magic, can’t focus on anything else.

Then they’re in a torch-lit elevator and some poor sack of shit is bleeding out at their feet even though Bellamy said they weren’t to kill anyone but the guy had his hands around Murphy’s throat and nobody else is allowed to touch Murphy’s throat so he didn’t really have a choice at all, if you think about it.

The pale boy sways under Bellamy’s heavy hand and his lips are parted and his hair hangs in his face and the echo of his angry scream as he charged at Bellamy’s attacker with empty hands and eyes full of fire still lingers behind their ears. Bellamy’s gonna kiss him. He’s gonna kiss him. He’s gonna do it. He’s gonna-

 

*******

 

It’s the nineteenth of June.

Raven throws her hands into the air like they’re full of confetti or anthrax or a fun combination. “I’m gonna need a brass barb and a coupling and another pressure regulator and I don’t even _like_ the son of a bitch-”

The door breathes in and out as he leaves the workshop behind and the entrance swinging in his wake, glaring daggers at everyone who eyes him as he carries an armful of colorful deflated balloons across camp.

Kane looks at him warily as Bellamy approaches, sweat beading on the back of his neck. “No one comes in or out for the next hour, can you do that for me?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t understand-”

“Can ‘ya do that for me?” he practically hisses, and the Chancellor backs off with raised hands.

He whisks away with a Manly Flourish and a _thanks so much really great work thanks for your help thank you so much thanks thanks thank_ s or something like that probably and he can barely breathe by the time he stumbles over to a table and releases the vibrant armful of rubber on a dozing Clarke’s head. She startles awake with saucer wide eyes and examines a little red balloon. “How long?”

Bellamy glances at the flickering green numbers on the impossibly large digital clock buried in the far east wall. He inhales a gust of wind. “Twenty minutes.”

The blonde jams the balloon between her lips like he has a gun to her head, huffing and puffing until her cheeks are splotchy and pink, and Bellamy throws himself to the table once over, uncapping the thick black marker and scratching out a curly succession of   ** _H-A-P-P-Y  B-I-R-T-H_**   before the length of the banner comes to an abrupt end.

The marker goes flying, Clarke’s eyes following the movement as the little instrument bounces off of the wall with an obnoxious clatter. She blinks over to the ruined stretch of paper with a grimace.

“I’m not sure why you didn’t let me-”

“It’s the _principle!_ ” he cries for the fifth time that evening, running a hand through raven locks as the clock ticks down another minute and the rivulets of sweat on his neck evolve into the motherfucking Nile.

She shrugs, tying a lime green balloon closed with a precise flick of her medic fingers. “Pretty sure he can’t read anyway.”

Bellamy glares at the neglected banner like it personally murdered his self-esteem with a blunt spork, before heaving it into a rustling pile in his arms and rushing it over to the wall, swinging a chair to the edge of it and plastering it down with the grease-covered tape he swiped from Raven’s worktable. It takes him a few tries, fingers covered in oil or snail slime or whatever the fuck Raven is lubing up her gears and gadgets with these days, but the obligatory sign for announcing the occasion is up. Lopsided and congratulating him apparently on getting shit out of a uterus on a miraculous slip ‘n slide or however the hell childbirth works, but up.

A harsh opening of the door nearly knocks him flat on his ass as he stumbles off of the chair. Emori’s voice rings through the mess hall like she’s talking to a man using a conch shell for a hearing aid. They're fifteen minutes too early. Bellamy had a plan. _A plan!_

 _“I_ know _you can make your own food, John, but I just thought it would be nice for us to have something other than grass soup-”_

The man scuttles to the one-woman balloon assembly line and jerks a thumb towards the door. Clarke hisses in a harsh whisper, “I don’t see why I have to leave, I-”

“He doesn’t like you, Clarke! You were going to kill his girlfriend, he does not like you!” he whisper-screams, forcibly dragging her chair out from under the table with her still sitting in it.

“You tried to kill _him!_ ”

“That’s different! You don’t get it! Out, _out out out out!_ Begone, woman!” He ushers her to the back exit, wildly motioning _‘shoo!’_ with his hands as she grumbles, face flushed by oxygen deprivation, which reminds him--

He runs to the monsoon of colorful little balloons, about five of them actually blown up and... glistening with spit. He really could have used that air compressor. Raven owes him one, he thinks bitterly, kicking them around the space to form some kind of optical illusion that there are at least six balloons.

“Wha-”

Bellamy does a full pirouette. _“SURPRISE!”_

Emori, missing his obvious queue, follows belatedly with another “Surprise?!”

And then it’s this whole _thing._

Murphy’s looking around at the balloons, Bellamy fidgets when his fingers flicker out like he’s counting. _(Don’t do that. Don’t count the balloons.)_

Then he’s glancing up at the **HAPPY BIRTH**  banner, squinting, when the greasy tape finally succumbs and releases the paper to the floor with a pathetic flutter.

Then he’s looking at the only other thing in the room.

Everything grays out. Teardrops on newspaper. _(‘Hear ye, hear ye. Feelings out the wazoo.’)_

Murphy’s eyes are shiny with unshed tears and his cheeks are dual glasses of pink wine and he pockets his hands, casting his eyes down to the floor. Bellamy takes a step forward, punches him gently on the upper arm, mutters “Happy birthday, dick.”

And suddenly there’s two strong arms around his shoulders and a fluttering breath on his neck and mosquitoes forming battering rams inside of his stomach again. Bellamy breathes in the distinct scent of sun and immortality covering the narrow stretch of Murphy's shoulders and he’d have it made into a candle if he could.

Murphy pulls back and looks up at him with a locked jaw and that terrible little smile and the man with the freckles and the head on fire is gonna kiss him, he’s gonna kiss him, he’s gonna-

“I believe I was promised a piñata.”

He’s gonna fucking kill him.

 

 

_(fin.)_

**Author's Note:**

> i still do not know
> 
> what this is. or why it came to be. or what it was meant to sound like. this is a goddamn ooc mess i am so sorry u all deserve better


End file.
